Mentoring some undergraduates-and having gone through the application process myself-has allowed me to see how much misinformation, ignorance, and ambiguity there is regarding placement data. I just checked out two programs one of my students is interested in to find that Program A claimed a 100% placement rate (except that it counts almost anything, tt, contingent, or nonacademic as placement). Program B listed an impressive list of schools its graduates have landed TT jobs in (except that it has no demographic data. If you do some digging you'll see that most impressive placements are from 20-40 years ago). I don't know if this is just thoughtless negligence or predatory deception.
For the ones who won't listen to the "just dont go" advice, what are some good guidelines and directions to steer my students in towards gaining a sober and critical understanding of placement data? So far I've some things I've thought of are:
-how many students per cohort
-time to graduation
-time to landing TT job (are students placing immediately? taking post docs? adjuncting?)
-types of institutions (SLAC's? R1s? R2s?)
-are the older graduates getting tenure? What's their career progression like?
They should also pay attention to which supervisors are graduating and placing students. In some departments, the bulk of placements come from people working with 1 or 2 faculty members, and everyone else is screwed.
FWIW, I consider any unclear representation of this kind of information a red flag. A department that just lists a series of institutions it's placed into, without at least separating out the cohorts and years, is a massive red flag.
Agreed. Another student of mine told me that they couldn't find any placement data on a prospective program's website. When they attended the visit weekend - their question about job prospects was avoided or passed around in a hot potato of "I'm not sure. You should ask so and so." or "check the website."
(later found out virtually none of the graduates from that program have gotten TT jobs. no suprise.)
Quote from: hazeus on June 10, 2020, 04:06:11 PM
Agreed. Another student of mine told me that they couldn't find any placement data on a prospective program's website. When they attended the visit weekend - their question about job prospects was avoided or passed around in a hot potato of "I'm not sure. You should ask so and so." or "check the website."
(later found out virtually none of the graduates from that program have gotten TT jobs. no suprise.)
Yeah...
My doctoral department was like this for a while, actually. Mostly because they were afraid of what they'd see when they collected the data, and partly out of fear of computers/websites/the internet. When they finally did (they weren't the last in my field by any means, but they were pretty slow all the same), however, they saw that it wasn't as bad as they thought--especially because they were only graduating 0-1 students each year (the data revealed a serious attrition rate, however, which is a different sort of problem!).
Armed with the information they've been able to start actually addressing placement problems, and they've worked pretty hard to improve the graduation rate (though there have been misguided efforts, too). At this point, now that I'm a few years out, their placements look perfectly respectable.
Quote from: hazeus on June 10, 2020, 03:31:21 PM
Program B listed an impressive list of schools its graduates have landed TT jobs in (except that it has no demographic data. If you do some digging you'll see that most impressive placements are from 20-40 years ago). I don't know if this is just thoughtless negligence or predatory deception.
Tracking this information in a meaningful way is really hard. Dept. B probably had a few people who ended up in prominent positions 10 to 30 years after finishing. So they listed them on the website a decade ago. And that information has not been edited since because nobody has had the time.
Like Parasaurolophus, I'd be looking at attrition rates as much as placement rates. I know a few programs that have great placement rates of about five graduates every year with no mention that each cohort starts with about 25.
Out of curiosity, when you say "placement," are you referring mostly to academic placement? I ask because we're collecting some data now, and I'm figuring out how much information we should gather about non-academic placement. Maybe non-academic placement can just be a broad "other" and fall off the radar? Or maybe the answer to that is different at different degree levels? Curious what others are collecting.
Quote from: MoJingly on June 12, 2020, 08:52:02 AM
Out of curiosity, when you say "placement," are you referring mostly to academic placement? I ask because we're collecting some data now, and I'm figuring out how much information we should gather about non-academic placement. Maybe non-academic placement can just be a broad "other" and fall off the radar? Or maybe the answer to that is different at different degree levels? Curious what others are collecting.
IMO the best placement documents indicate non-academic placements as well. Lumping it all under 'other' (1) looks like it's trying to hide something, and (2) does a real disservice to your program's graduates (as well as anyone else looking at placement documents for alt-ac inspiration), for whom the document could have been a great starting point for figuring out alt-ac careers and networking.
Quote from: Parasaurolophus on June 12, 2020, 10:00:14 AM
Quote from: MoJingly on June 12, 2020, 08:52:02 AM
Out of curiosity, when you say "placement," are you referring mostly to academic placement? I ask because we're collecting some data now, and I'm figuring out how much information we should gather about non-academic placement. Maybe non-academic placement can just be a broad "other" and fall off the radar? Or maybe the answer to that is different at different degree levels? Curious what others are collecting.
IMO the best placement documents indicate non-academic placements as well. Lumping it all under 'other' (1) looks like it's trying to hide something, and (2) does a real disservice to your program's graduates (as well as anyone else looking at placement documents for alt-ac inspiration), for whom the document could have been a great starting point for figuring out alt-ac careers and networking.
I agree with Parasaurolophus that a nebulous other is not a good way to go. At a minimum, I like to see something like:
* government: degree-related
- (2010) FBI research scientist
- (2015) Lawrence Livermore National Lab research scientist
* government: unrelated
- (2012) Idaho Falls community programs manager
- (2014) Idaho Falls high school teacher's aide
* non-profit: degree-related
- (2013) Southwest Research Institute research engineer
* non-profit: unrelated
- (2017) <City> Girl Scouts regional office; second assistant in charge of cookie distribution
- (2015) <City> Regional Theatre, director of community outreach
* business: degree-related
- (2005) Archer Daniels Midland, senior scientist
- (2007) Bayer (Berlin), uberchemist
* business: unrelated
- (2007) Archer Daniels Midland, Midwest regional manager (current), initially senior chemist
- (2019) Joe's Independent Bookstore, chief bottle washer and wearing all the hats
Of course, I come at this from disciplines where an academic job is, at best, one of the standard choices. While wearing my engineering hat, I know that almost no one wants an academic job, so the most useful information is where the graduates go and what kind of jobs they are doing for which one gets a graduate degree in engineering on purpose, rather than a far distant back-up plan.
Yeah. FWIW, here's Michigan's placement page (https://lsa.umich.edu/philosophy/graduates/prospective-students/placement.html) in my field, which does a good job of it.
A few years ago, their placement page was even better: they kept track of enrollment and attrition data, and you could see how it all played out across a cohort's time in the program. The information looks like it's gone now, however. But it was amazing while there.
MIT has that sort of information, though. You can see their placement page here (https://philosophy.mit.edu/placement).
I agree with Parasaurolophus. I think it is useful to provide information about non-academic placement. We are a reasonably respected department, but, by their own choice, less than half of our graduates end up in faculty positions (i.e., they are chosing these careers not out of desperation and lack of possible faculty jobs but because they think that these options are more interesting/relevant/better-quality-of-life). Information about other career choices is useful to prospective students (and our current students) so that they know some of the other options that will use the skills/knowledge/professionalization they are expected to develop as graduate students.
Quote from: polly_mer on June 12, 2020, 10:35:00 AM
I agree with Parasaurolophus that a nebulous other is not a good way to go. At a minimum, I like to see something like:
* government: degree-related
- (2010) FBI research scientist
- (2015) Lawrence Livermore National Lab research scientist
I really like the idea of some sort of "degree-related" category or flag, and it falls nicely into what arcturus said about utilizing skills and knowledge from the degree. That could be tricky in practice though. Is that just sort of a judgement call in each case?
Quote from: hazeus on June 10, 2020, 03:31:21 PM
Mentoring some undergraduates
[. . . ]
Turn this into a research project. Ask the undergraduates to identify a few universities at which they would like to have careers as professors. Tell them to use ranking, salary vs. cost of living, and other data to inform their choices. Then tell them to look at where tenured faculty in the departments at those universities obtained their PhDs. Then have them start digging for the cost, completion rates, etc. of those programs.
[/quote]
Turn this into a research project. Ask the undergraduates to identify a few universities at which they would like to have careers as professors. Tell them to use ranking, salary vs. cost of living, and other data to inform their choices. Then tell them to look at where tenured faculty in the departments at those universities obtained their PhDs. Then have them start digging for the cost, completion rates, etc. of those programs.
[/quote]
Excellent suggestion. I would trust this data more than departments' self report of placement. An important thing to keep track of besides just where faculty received their PhD's is where and how many Post-Docs they did. In my field, very difficult now to land a TT position fresh from a PhD.
Quote from: MoJingly on June 12, 2020, 12:46:45 PM
Quote from: polly_mer on June 12, 2020, 10:35:00 AM
I agree with Parasaurolophus that a nebulous other is not a good way to go. At a minimum, I like to see something like:
* government: degree-related
- (2010) FBI research scientist
- (2015) Lawrence Livermore National Lab research scientist
I really like the idea of some sort of "degree-related" category or flag, and it falls nicely into what arcturus said about utilizing skills and knowledge from the degree. That could be tricky in practice though. Is that just sort of a judgement call in each case?
Ask your graduates to self categorize. This isn't an exact science. For example, I was an institutional researcher at one point. It's not typical to have a material engineering degree in that position, but my graduate computational background was much more a daily help than when I was teaching material I learned in middle/high school in gen ed as a TT professor.
perhaps also salary or how many of the tenure track alumni have published a book or under contract for a book? or is that standard only relevant for r1 faculty?
Quote from: hazeus on June 13, 2020, 05:45:25 PM
perhaps also salary or how many of the tenure track alumni have published a book or under contract for a book? or is that standard only relevant for r1 faculty?
Salary is so variable by location that the information is not useful.
I would be much more interested in publication rate at time of graduation than what happens during the next step. If everyone has N>5 articles when TT hires across the US average 5, then that's useful information regarding the value of the program. Likewise, if graduates average 1 article and successful TT hires average 10, then that's also useful information on preparation for the job market.
Another possibly useful bit of information may be funded conference attendance during grad school and average number of presentations per graduate. I was stunned when I learned that some programs didn't send students to at least one important conference per year nor did those programs insist on at least submission of articles during grad school.
Quote from: hazeus on June 13, 2020, 05:45:25 PM
perhaps also salary or how many of the tenure track alumni have published a book or under contract for a book? or is that standard only relevant for r1 faculty?
The expectations for various career trajectories don't have any consistent measures. Matching the performance to expectations would be a very difficult task. No more difficult, and far more valuable, would be to find out how satisfied the graduates are with their life and career.
If the idea is to help undergraduates chose a graduate program, that is still not precise enough. Even a program that results in extremely high satisfaction is wrong for a student who values different things from that schools of graduate alumni.
Prospective graduate students should have a candid talk with the director of graduate studies in all the programs they are considering. Some will better match their own values and have capacity for them to excel after finishing their graduate degree.
This disclaimer/statement, on the University of Texas/Arlington's site, sounds like a compilation of some of the ideas often put forth here:
https://www.uta.edu/cola/academics/index.php#graduate&gsc.tab=0
M.